Nikita Linivenko

“All The Cool Kids Smoke” by Nikita Linivenko

Submitted to Contest #91

The principal of our school waved me out of his office. I went down the hall and when I got to the library, Mike Manson and Tom Feldman were being chewed out by the librarian. The way she was going off you’d think they were planning to torch the joint or something. Lianne Thompson paradoxically had a body where everything was tight and flat, yet somehow managed to be what Patrick Bateman would call a ‘hardbody’ all at on...

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“The Capitalist Cookbook” by Nikita Linivenko

The pimple-faced teenager who looks like Ron Weasley in a clown wig and who works part-time behind the library check-out counter grins at me when I slide my return over to him, a slim 248-page paperback of The Spook Who Sat By The Door. He winks and sez: wanna see something?He shuffles to a room behind the desk and comes out with a bundle of papers. When he plops it down I flip through it:Chapter One: Drugs. Chapter Two: Electronics, Sabotage, and Surveillance. Chapter Three: Natural, Nonl...

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“Trainfishing” by Nikita Linivenko

Submitted to Contest #90

I give up on trying to read the Irvine Welsh novel, what with the bloke across from me yammering on. “David Bowie was such a big fan of Shallow Grave, that’s why he let Danny Boyle use his music in Trainspotting.” I nod along and out the corner of my eye tick off the people shuffling past periodically up and down the car. Much like Lavrentiy Beria, I have a knack for names and faces, but mostly faces, a n...

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“My Steak Dinner With Andre ” by Nikita Linivenko

  “See, a good steak dinner serves a purpose,” sez Andre, knifing a hunk out of a slab of cow. “Scientists theorize that at one point, way back in primordial Africa, the human race came close to extinction. This was like a million years ago, before we were humans, there was this drought, and when the water became scarce, plant life became scarce. At that point, seems like these critters were mostly vegetarian, so when the plants and berries went, so did most of the race. Being vegan nearly killed the future ...

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“Wear Flowers In Your Hair” by Nikita Linivenko

Submitted to Contest #90

“And Spring brought me the frightening laughter of the idiot!” -Arthur Rimbaud A Season in Hell On a Friday in April, we crossed St. Johns bridge outta Portland and into the sawmill country below. Before we pulled out, the lines on a local college station were open, taking requests and Big John put in the call. They were swamped and the DJ finally threw on “Velouria” ten ...

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“Scotty Beam Mich Hoch, Part Deux ” by Nikita Linivenko

Submitted to Contest #88

Nestor, now sober, crossed under the spotlight and tapped his hands on the podium, trying not to make eye contact with the packed auditorium. “Dim the lights. Thank you. It’s not that I have an aversion to public speaking, I just feel better if I don’t see all those eyes on me. Now, all you sitting there in the dark. I could rave like always. I could give you all the schtick you expect from me. I could spew plati...

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“I Will Follow You Into the Park ” by Nikita Linivenko

Submitted to Contest #86

You slipped out of the house halfway through the Vincent Price marathon. I don’t think you could’ve seen me. We went downhill together; I think I wet myself somewhere along the way. You stepped through the east gate onto the green, the Walpurgis Night bonfire already heaped and leaping high with benzine. You hung around the edge and watched the glow and though there were people there you knew, you didn’t talk to anyone. ...

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“The W.A.S.P. Factory” by Nikita Linivenko

Submitted to Contest #84

Taking my eyes off the page, I pluck my house key from my pocket and scratch another notch into the desk. I then stare across the room for a while at a wall calendar taped up between two floor-to-ceiling windows, searching for a clue as to which of those squares this morning falls on. Somewhere around the middle of that grid. That much I can say. I poke my head into the next cubicle and ask Hollis: what day is it? <...

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“Islands on the Coast” by Nikita Linivenko

Submitted to Contest #83

“When he was ousted from office, Porfirio Diaz boarded his yacht to Europe, turned, took one last look at his country and said: “Poor Mexico! So far from God and so close to the United States!” Porfirio Diaz also said: “Nothing ever happens in Mexico until it happens.” The bucket hat wearing hipster snubbed out his clove and let his opened paperback of The Savage Detectives slide down his ...

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“Fear and Loathing Made Easy” by Nikita Linivenko

Submitted to Contest #83

I imagine my deliverance coming in the form of a bottle of Klonopin I find in my pocket and take with me into the bathroom. Going out on a handful of ’90’s designer drugs, frothing at the mouth and thinking of pigeons and insects, millions of insects; fade to black, maybe white as a final electrical surge jolts through my occipital lobe in one last desperate bid, on the image of Piccadilly Circus as I saw it, chasing pig...

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“Do Androids Dream of Designer Brands? ” by Nikita Linivenko

Submitted to Contest #82

The yellow sheets of Giallo, the rough, finger-razoring cardboard pages of crushed pulp - now discontinued - were phased out by slick, glossy high-end journals. Fletch rubbed her slim, bare legs on the duvet as she leaned heavily into the pillow, flicking through a reprint of an Ursula K. Le Guin story. Ursula le Guin had been dead for half a century, but they still ran her stuff. Anthologized them. Dumped them i...

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“Night Talk” by Nikita Linivenko

Caryn White lived up to her name. Mostly. She was frigid with her husband, howled and clawed like a hellcat in heat when her son’s friends were around, and dutifully notified other absolutely irreplacable and societally indespensable lebensborn like her when followed by something a shade too dark or a tad too twitchy, only later realizing it was her own shadow. Only time she couldn’t be bothered was when her foot...

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“O.S. TK” by Nikita Linivenko

Submitted to Contest #82

When people, few that there are, ask me if I see the irony, I say: no, I refuse to see the irony in the fact that I was skimming through a reprint of  ‘I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream’ when we launched The Imitation Game.  At first, it ran something like this: ‘Hello. I am Wintermute. That was a joke. Ha ha. Did you like my joke? My name is OK COMPUTER.’ Baby steps. Throug...

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“Pink & Blue ” by Nikita Linivenko

Submitted to Contest #81

Felix goes by Felicia now. They pumped his chest with silicone or something, though they bounce natural enough. Maybe they got something more natural now. I make a note to ask him later. He still has his John Holmes though, thank God, like two coke cans stacked together. We’d sometimes hang after school and I’d fantasize about doing to him what those two blokes did to Joey Lauren Adams in Chasing Amy that got Be...

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“Come On, My Selector” by Nikita Linivenko

Submitted to Contest #80

“What does a scanner see? ... I mean, really see? Into the head? Down into the heart?… into us - clearly or darkly? I hope it does…see clearly, because I can't any longer… see into myself. I see only murk. Murk outside; murk inside. I hope, for everyone's sake, the scanners do better. Because…if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I myself do, then we are cursed, cursed again… and we'll wind up dead this way, knowing very little and getting that little fragment wrong too.”-Philip K. Dick

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